Israel At War 5785: Vayeishev – The Buck Stops Where?

Who was responsible for selling Joseph, Jacob’s favorite son, into slavery in Egypt?

This week’s Torah portion, Vayeishev, tells us that his brother Judah suggested to the other brothers that they sell him to a passing caravan of Ishmaelites. (Genesis 37:25, 27)

However, the very next verse tells us that Midianite traders, not his brothers, drew Joseph out of the pit into which the brothers had thrown him, and in turn sold him to the Ishmaelites, who brought him to Egypt. (Genesis 37:28)

So, who was responsible? The Ishmaelites, who sold him in Egypt? The Midianites, who provided him to the Ishmaelites? Or the brothers, who abandoned him in the pit where the Midianites found him?

American president Harry Truman had a sign on his desk: “The buck stops here.” The phrase meant that President Truman took ultimate responsibility for his administration’s actions, regardless of the decisions, and decision-makers, that played a part in them.

Last week I wrote about collective responsibility, asking how far responsibility extends in what we could call a horizontal fashion in the concentric circles of individual, community, and the larger society. But responsibility can also extend vertically, as we ponder how far back it goes, in a chain of cause and effect.

It is a question that many in Israel have been asking since October 7th. The immediate perpetrators that day were terror groups such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, as well as Gazan civilians, who also invaded Israel that day. Interestingly, in an echo of the Joseph story, some of the kidnappers were civilians who sold their captives to Hamas or PIJ members. Hamas kidnappers, in turn, often passed hostages on to civilian guards.

So, who should bear the blame: the original kidnappers or those who accepted hostages from them? Or were both equally culpable?

And we can go back still further in the chain of responsibility. We know that higher-ups ignored intelligence about Hamas’ plans. Confusion and lack of preparation that day meant many Israelis received no help from their military for hours. There have been calls, as there should be, for a commission of inquiry to determine responsibility for the massive intelligence and military failures that left so many dead and kidnapped that day. But should that absolve October 7th terrorists of their sins?

While Israel wrestles with the chain of responsibility, Israel haters have their own take. The saying, “History didn’t start on October 7th,” has become popular among blamers of Israel. What these critics usually mean is that history started in 1948 with 750,000 Palestinians losing their homes in what is now Israel. They neglect to mention that they only lost their homes because, also in 1948, the Arabs declared war and tried to wipe out the new state of Israel. Had there been no war, there’d have been no refugees, and Gaza and the West Bank would be parts of an independent Arab state. The critics don’t know, or don’t care, that Arabs in the land committed multiple pogroms against Jews as early as 1838 and as late as 1938, before there was even a state of Israel.

You see, that is the problem with going down the responsibility rabbit hole. You can always find someone or something even earlier to blame. Do we start with Joseph, who brought a bad report about his brothers to their father and taunted them with his dreams, thereby incurring their resentment? (Genesis 37:2, 5-10)

Or was it Jacob’s fault for favoring and spoiling Joseph, stimulating the brothers’ jealousy? But maybe it wasn’t Jacob’s fault either, because he had been tricked into marrying Leah; had Laban allowed him to marry Rachel and left Leah out of it, there’d have been no preference for a favored wife’s son. Not to mention, Jacob’s own father, Isaac, set the bad example by favoring Esau. And poor Isaac was so traumatized by his near-sacrifice at his father’s hands, how could he possibly have been expected to be a good parent?

Once we start holding earlier incidents and people responsible for our own bad behavior, invariably and inevitably we must go all the way back to Cain’s murder of his brother Abel, or Eve and Adam choosing to eat those darned apples. Yet we must also be able to look far enough to assign reasonable accountability. How far is too far? Where does the buck stop?

We know that Joseph held his brothers ultimately responsible. After many years, when he revealed himself to them in Egypt, he said quite plainly that they sold him into slavery (Genesis 45:4) He did not mention the Ishmaelites or Midianites. True, the brothers were unable to fulfill their intention of selling him to the Ishmaelites, if only because the Midianites beat them to it. But had they not left him trapped and alone, the Midianites could not have taken him captive. Yet this does not absolve the Midianites of responsibility, nor the Ishmaelites. They took captive and sold a fellow human being. But the principal cause was the brothers’ action.

Did Joseph himself bear any responsibility for his brother’s treatment because of the bad reports of them he gave to his father? (Genesis 37:2) Hundreds of years later, Miriam was punished for slandering her brother, Moses, with tzara’at, not death or enslavement. Regardless of whether Joseph was guilty of lashon hara (evil speech), his brothers’ actions were unjustified.

And, while Israel’s intelligence, government, and military leadership can and must be found accountable for their mistakes and neglect, those who kidnapped and killed cannot be absolved. Neither by government errors nor by regional history.

The buck for the failure to defend and rescue the victims stops with those who left their people vulnerable. And history may go back to 1948 and even farther, but the buck stops with Hamas for their atrocities, still ongoing while they refuse to release those captives they have not murdered.